Guild Wars 2

That was a good catch, Sieg. Below is my personal opinion on your response (about the Infinity Ball), which I’ll admit – I haven’t spent hours digging around for, trying to come up with the absolutely-one-hundred-percent-perfect-lore-based-answer.

The Infinity Ball opens up a portal to a place that is not only likely the future, but also an alternate reality. Especially considering that after the PC defeats said evil version of themself, s/he swears to not try to rule the world. That pretty much prevents him/her from becoming Evil Dictator of Everything, if only the Evil part.

Time diagonal, if you will. Forwards and sideways.

So, the simple act of powering the Infinity Ball not only opened up a portal to another timeline, it also completely prevented that timeline from ever occurring inside GW2 canon (again, by forcing the PC to defeat the evil version of themself and then swear off becoming Supreme Ruler of Everything).

So, maybe in the time-space continuum where you ARE Supreme Ruler of Everything, you launched a blitz attack on the Charr using Steam creatures AND their portals before they could mount an adequate defense.

But since Steam creatures haven’t been invented by Asura PCs yet (they come through portals presumably from that other timeline), there’s no reason to be worried about it.

Unless you’re the kind of conspiracy theorist that exists only in popular media.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

But I don’t agree with your point. I’m not sure if centaurs have been in contact with Jormag’s influence much at all, and I don’t see any use in corrupted bats. And as far as the Jotun are concerned, many of them have fled. Also, there is a corrupted Jungle Wurm in Caledon Forest. Not by Jormag, but corrupted none the less.

The female Norn are a different matter though. We are told explicitly that their fate after facing Jormag, is unknown. That is a clear hint that more is going on. Now you could spin that any way you wish, but it is not on equal footing with a lack of corrupted centaurs, jotun, wurms or bats. Unlike centaurs, we know that all Norn have been in direct conflict with Jormag on a very frequent basis. So the fact that we haven’t seen any of them turned to Icebrood, and the fact that this absence is emphasized in the lore, is a clear indication that there might be more to this than meets the eye. It validates investigation. You of all people should recognize a lore mystery when you see one.

If we look at this interview, about two thirds of the way down, Jeff Grub and Ree Soesbee explain that Jormag would corrupt females, but since the Sons of Svanir are a mens-only club, women found trying to worship Jormag as Dragon are killed.

Their hatred kind of makes sense (if you really want to stretch suspension of disbelief), since their historical champion (Svanir) was killed by Jora – a Norn woman.

The Asura would never be able to assault the Black Citadel this way. Why? Ask the Charr NPCs around the Asura Gate. One of them is checking the charges set on the bridge. They honestly expect something bad to come through the gate, and have a means to make sure that they don’t easily get into the city – blow the bridge.

If that didn’t immediately destroy the gate, it would at least make it seriously difficult for the Asura to get enough forces through it, since the gate takes up most of the area on the platform it rests on.

Yeah.. I like to wait every 10 levels or so (20, 30, 50, so on) before I run a section of the personal story. It gives me about 2 levels for all of them. And as Kobal said, rewards don’t scale with your own level – they’re set at what they are. Still, you can get somewhat hard-to-find items from the Personal Story if you are willing to wait until you can run different sections of it.

Nifty weapons and armour for transmutes, once in a while.

I used to just assume that Zhaitan was dead after Arah story – fully and completely dead.

Yet, for some reason, TwowaysyaWowT, I now feel compelled to believe that he’s just defeated.

Assuming his body is still in Arah somewhere, Elder Dragons still feed off of magic, and the fact we never spread its atoms throughout the stars, I think it could return. Though it cannot ingest artifacts as it once could (thanks to us killing its Mouth), I suspect that, given time and perhaps a lot of injections of pure magic, Zhaitan could possibly recover and terrorize the world anew.

But it’s just a thought. One with potential to be awesome, but a thought nonetheless.

For now, I’ll just think over how I feel about the Personal Story from the formation of the Pact onwards, and how it could be improved upon, now or later. And… figure out where to put those thoughts. They want to be written!

I enjoyed doing story missions like in vanilla GW2 (yes I just called pre-Southsun that), even if uninteresting sidekicks were dying all over the place.

Heck, I still do my Personal Story on alts even though I’ve probably done that same story path like five times already.

I’ll be voting for Kiel. As interesting as pre-GW1 lore may be, I’m more interested in putting a person in charge who is more interested in the security and good fortune of others than someone who just wants more money.

I’ll use the new Candidate Trials as my best example. Evon wants to use the riches to further his own political agenda. While it makes total sense to use profits earned from bad guys (the Aetherblades), I don’t think it compares to Ellen’s approach to the downed ship; return everything to the people they belong to.

I mean, if someone stole all the stuff out of my place, I wouldn’t vote for the guy who is now walking down the street with all of it – even if he took it from the guys who stole it from me!

But I would find it amusing, if only for a minute or two.

Then I would demand my stuff back, because it was illegally seized from me.

Ellen Kiel still has a lot of growing up to do, especially if she becomes a part of the Council. She trusts Magnus like a soldier trusts his/her CO, but if/when she becomes his equal, she will have to make her own decisions. If Anet is smart and lets her develop her own character, she’ll have to disagree with Magnus on something.

Bonus points if she can convince him not to smack her upside the head for disagreeing with him, while disagreeing with him.

And who knows? Maybe we can pull this election off without any uninteresting characters getting killed off for no good reason.

Don’t warriors have a signet that improves endurance recovery rate by 50%?

It’s like 5 points in Wilderness Survival for Rangers, but you can put points into other things AND it acts as a full condition cleanse on use.

Silver.4798:

There are debates about what the absolute max optimization is, but a lot of it is player skill oriented.

I personally run a 30/25/0/0/15 build (its one of the more standard zerker warr builds out there) and I clear CoF pretty fast especially with other zerker wars and mesmer (within 8-9 mins or so).

Gear is all zerker, technically you would do more damage with scholar runes (assuming you know how to avoid damage in CoF) but thats more than 3g a piece, I do fine with ruby orbs I think the difference in damage output isn’t much between the two.

Weapons are greatsword and axe/mace. Rotation is variable depending on who you ask, I do GS HB —> WW --> Weapon swap —> axe 3 as I close gap --> axe 2 —> mace 4 --> axe full autoattack chain —> Weapon swap --> HB —> ww --> etc. Make sure to drop a banner(s) before the fight and use FGJ and Signet of Rage as soon as it is off cooldown (assuming you’re using signet of rage and not battle standard, which you should use if no one else is).

Sigils are also variable, I use superior sigil of bloodlust on my GS and sigil of force/might on my axe/mace. Other people use sigil of the night, accuracy, etc. I do other PvE content besides CoF on my warrior so sigil of bloodlust is helpful there, but for strictly CoF the increased damage sigils (particularly sigil of force, night, accuracy) are the better choice

Slot skills I use for CoF is Mending, FGJ, a banner either discipline or strength (depending on what other warriors in the group are using), shake it off, and Signet of rage (or Battle Standard but only if no other warrior is running it). If there are 4 warriors in the group and they have banner of discipline, strength and battle standard already down take On my Mark instead)

You might find you’ll do more damage if you replace your Sigil of Force with Sigil of Smothering. The extra 5% damage over Force (10% overall, though specific only to Flame Legion) is a little more hurt, if you choose to take it.

Olba.5376:

Curious, because I count 5 banners.

And honestly, other people picking up the banner is an issue. With an easy fix, too. Just make it so that only the Warrior can pick up the banner.

Allowing you to have the effects of the banners without the skills would just result in the skills being neglected by pretty much everyone. Oh and it would also strengthen banners significantly, which would probably result in a nerf to their bonuses.

I strongly disagree with this. If only the warrior could pick up their own banners, neither of my two rangers, and my two guildmates who main rangers could DPS properly.

Just thought I would amuse a few of you, if I could. Banners do in fact deal more damage per hit than ranger weapons.

@ OP: Kill Shot still has the potential to pierce targets, you just have to swap traits for it.

From what I can recall, Kill Shot is more powerful than Eviscerate (as far as damage numbers on the skill goes), but Eviscerate can only hit one target. Kill Shot can go through crowds to hit your target.

Especially effective when fighting in tight spaces. Try to target a guy in the back of the enemy zerg and BAM – you just hit a lot of people for a decent chunk of health.

Sometimes all of their health. Them glass cannons in the zerg, man.

I only cry when three warriors and a guardian gang up on me and CC me to death in sPvP. When 1v1?…No. But they’re always interesting fights.

Considering how many people run Arah, maybe we don’t see a corpse because you people keep taking small chunks of it to go buy weapons and armour.

Kidding aside, I’m constantly seeing people forget that we shot down a severely hungry and weak Elder Dragon. Whatever Eyes of Zhaitan he had left were not able to move around sufficiently to see what the Pact was trying to do. We destroyed the Mouth of Zhaitan, effectively starving him by making sure he would never ever eat magical artifacts ever again.

Though… much as I want to defend the personal story, Anet likes to leave out juicy details in a lot of things I take interest in, or make us have to dig for it. While it’s not bad to scrounge for lore, leaving out important details like “Zhaitan is hungry and blind and weak and this is the best chance we have to shoot him out of the sky with a BIG SCARY LASER” was a big mistake. And that (I would believe) is why people are so disappointed by his defeat.

Well… that, and I felt like he never really was the threat Anet wanted him to be. Everyone shooting him down with flak just didn’t seem as cool as it should have been. It needed more unending tide of Risen on the deck, while firing the cannons.

@OP:

I’m not too sure, but I can usually hit someone in WvW 2-4 times and still get credit for a kill, across many classes. Sometimes two shots is fine, other times it doesn’t work. I don’t pretend to understand it.

SoM and DS seems overpowered when it comes to tagging, but I suppose that’s why it’s so awesome, isn’t it?

And whatever happened to running into a zerg and spamming Cluster Bomb on the shortbow?! Best way for a thief to tag things.

Where is this event? Must complete. Must feels!

Mcrocha.3891:

The ICD only affects the person who activates the spirit.

That’s what I suspected, but I wasn’t entirely sure. Thanks!

I’ve always wanted to play around with a spirit build (mobile banners, woo!), but I’ve been hesitant because of the effect recharge.

Does the 10 second internal CD affect only the person who activates the spirit, or does it affect the spirit itself, meaning for 10 seconds nobody gets to proc it?

I’m getting 5:11:3:159:101 as well. So far I’ve found I can’t enter the new content, the Eternal Battlegrounds, and Stonewright’s Steading.

I’ll usually get hit by it again after a mandatory relog, and then after a second one I’ll pop back into Hoelbrak.

And yet for me, waypoints and Asura Gates work fine.

Edit: None of my router settings have changed in the last few hours since it happened, so I know that it isn’t on my end.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The so-called dungeon “meta” right now seems to be based around taking a subpar composition (4 warriors 1 mesmer usually) that isn’t even capable of maxing out all the relevant buffs, and coming up with convoluted and inefficient ways to circumvent this deficiency, like trying to burst a boss down in a single Time Warp because you can’t maintain might or vulnerability for any longer than that. That works on some bosses but I see a lot of so-called “speed run” groups that are heavily kitten because they have almost no might or vulnerability and sometimes don’t even have fury.

I don’t see what you mean. If the Meta is subpar (as you have just said), then why can they clear CoF1 faster than any other composition, assuming equal gear and skill in the class(es) they play?

Maybe it’s because they (warriors) can throw out more damage than other classes. I mean, why else would they be in the meta, if not for that fact?

Yeah.. sorry about that. I’ve just been wracking my brain to find an adequate build for my two girls with a greater explanation than just a bunch of slashes, numbers, and a gear set.

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

20/20/0/0/30 with a short bow, piercing arrows, full zerker and a cat is your highest dps output as a ranger. Try that out sometime. A full 30 points into BM doubles your cat’s damage output while increasing its survivability drastically. All that you’re essentially losing is 10% crit damage, and 100 power.

And your melee traits add conditions damage and toughness. Although with trait trees, you generally want to ignore the stats you gain from them and instead focus on the traits themselves.

Yeah, I know I should go for traits over stats, but it still bugs me that Wilderness Survival seems to be pointing players into two different directions at once – flat damage through melee weapon traits, or condition damage just with points. But the sword and greatsword are both poor choices for a condition build, I think.

sdlkfdlsgd I just hate that.

Actually, I was just discussing 20 into skirmishing and 30 into BM with a guildie, using the traits offered in both trees to increase the amount of healing on the pet (increased healing, natural regen, heal on crits). Would that be useful in that build, or would it just be better to pick up more damaging majors?

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

I personally have been running either a pure zerker or Knight’s BM build, one as pure glass cannon with GS/SB and the other as more of a PvP oriented with GS/SB or GS/S+D depending. For PvE all I can tell you is watch your pet’s health like a hawk, and know when you need to call it back or be ready to hot swap. I’ve successfully done fotm 28+ with my BM build and running a jag+stalker, while only having them downed a couple of times. Always due to stray AoE.

Note: I don’t ever sPvP, nor tPvP. I despise it and the clinical feel to the matches; I always duo or solo roam in WvW, picking fights with groups.

Ah. I’m sorry for making that mistake!

I never really thought to use BM as a PvE spec, since I consider the lower damage on the ranger’s side (from traits) to be lower than other ranger specs (not focused on the pet and/or survivability). I still try to put at least 15 into BM for the swap cooldown, but I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that most of the melee weapon damage traits are in the same line as the one that stacks condition damage per trait point spent.

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

Deep within the bowels of the ranger forum, I have a post outlining everything I’ve found yo be broken with the class. Relatively speaking, it’s not as bad as people would think. Yes, rangers will likely always be kitten upon in PvE situations due to the reliance on an AI, but in a PvP scenario (not including zerg v zerg WvW here) that AI is the very thing that makes the class what it is. You’re always running around with your own force multiplier – always forcing someone to choose between dealing with the player, or the pet; and a good ranger can either overpower, lock the enemy into a stalemate forcing the other player to retreat or allow the ranger to disengage at their own will.

Frankly, there’s no other class that allows me to play like I can my ranger.

Just as a side question, how do you play? I’ve tried a couple builds in sPvP and I keep getting steamrolled by half the enemies in hotjoin.

But more to the point, ranger PvE is just… poor. Our sniping weapon (the longbow) is outdone by the mid-range 2h (shortbow), and pets become super squishy in places like dungeons (and especially boss battle or certain events). Unlike PvP, where your opponent can usually take on either the pet -or- the player, but not both, PvE generally has enough mechanics to attack both at the same time and for painfully large amounts of damage.

In PvP, I have the option to bring a cat or bird with me into the fray, and get away with it. At worst, I may be forced to swap it out on cooldown. But in PvE (dungeons specifically), I have to take a wolf, drake, or bear just to be forced into swapping my pet on CD. And even then? The wolf and drake pets can still die despite my efforts to maintain them.

I’m personally curious to know why the longbow didn’t get an auto-attack damage buff, and what kind of builds they want players to try out after these changes.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

The Sword autoattack is suicide at Lupicus. You wouldn’t and aren’t able to dodge his attacks consistently (or at all), you definitely can’t dodge the swarms and cleave them with it, and Dagger isn’t as useful as a Warhorn, offhand Axe, or Torch would be. If you’ve ever tried soloing Lupicus with a Ranger, you’ll realize how few options you have.

The sword is not a difficult weapon to play with. It’s like relearning how to ride a bicycle; you might fall down once or twice if you haven’t used it in ages, but the attack chain is really easy to figure and it’s not impossible to stop halfway through to get in a dodge or an evade (like #2 or #3). The dagger, though… yeah, it’s situational. In a Lupi fight, I’d take the axe for the missile reflect – not doing so when using a sword would just be silly on my part. But a third evade isn’t so bad, even if it is tiny.

The personal stories are surprisingly linear. While your racial sympathy choices are different, when they both end the personal story will return to how it used to be.

You’ll both be able to play the same missions together – after that story – and get credit for it.

Actually, most of my minions were on cooldown while I was running away. If I had around 50% of my health instead of 10%, I might have tried to stay and fight with what I had. That’s not including Death Shroud, but if I remember right I didn’t have any of that either! ^^;

Bhawb.7408:

Blood Fiend is great, until he dies and you are left with no heal.

Then I run half the length of the Forest of Niflhel trying to get away from a GS mesmer and his clones, so I can heal up from the 10% health I have left. Ahhh, good times.

Bhawb.7408:

So how do you deal with that? You give yourself more burst healing/LF generation, you pick up CB or WoS (or roll with a team, which requires you to not rely on living minions too much). Basically, you hybridize out, to cover the huge weaknesses of minion builds, which leaves you with a build that is not 100% minions.

Which is sad, because I like to run a full MM build despite its inherent weaknesses. I currently use Blood Fiend, though I still consider the well over it so that I can heal them a small amount.

There’s nothing better than chain-CCing a particularly elusive target to death with a full MM build and dagger/warhorn.

Unless there is something better. I don’t know. I have fun with the build in hotjoin.

Bhawb.7408:

The Charge is priceless.

It’s like you’re making the other team eat dirt before they eat dirt.

Shadow Assault suffers from the inability to move around while it’s being cast. Move away and swap to your underwater ranged weapon until the thief runs out of initiative.

1.) AoE Blinds spam

2.) Massive amount of regeneration due to Vampiric trait / wells siphon / focus regen

3.) Excellent survivability in PvE because of 1&2

4.) Minions! Admittedly lacking in responsiveness, they are great damage soaks / sources of damage when they do work

5.) Chain CC on a single target: Dagger #3, Warhorn #4, flesh golem charge, DS #3, staff #5

I have way too much fun in sPvP with this class.

10.) CCing multiple targets with the Flesh Golem’s charge, despite only trying to get one.

9/10 on a good day, 6/10 when I’m not playing as well as I should.

In PvE/dungeons, I run with a wells/siphoning build. Combined with soldier stats, I can sit in almost any melee fight and not have to worry about a thing. The sheer amount of blinds I can put on foes makes me laugh my head off if things were going south just before.

In sPvP, my tactics change. I run a minion master build similar to the one that some of the tPvP players have shown us on other threads in recent weeks. I have a hilarious time in hotjoin because of how fun it can be. I’m able to hold my own in a 1v1, sometimes a 1v2, and I can assist teammates very well if they’re struggling to hold onto a capture point.

Flesh golem charge from off-screen, anyone?

Sovta.4719:

Hahahahhahaha, why would people capture points in a game where you win by……capturing points?

The complaint is that too many players are sitting on one spot when there’s no real need for it. It only takes one player to capture a point, and it doesn’t speed up the process to have multiple people of the same team sitting on it. They could and probably should be moving onto other points or a secondary objective, rather than sitting around and literally doing nothing until circle turns their colour.

Personally, I hate the downed state.

Every time I get sent on my behind in sPvP, in a group fight, I’m left for dead most of the time. The few people (and trust me, it is a very few people) who do try to rez me, often start when there’s an enemy already halfway through the finisher animation, which means I die anyways. I only hold leniency for people who try to revive me shortly after I witness a stealth-capable class disappear for a nigh-uninterruptable finisher. Then I can tell myself that they didn’t see the enemy that killed me.

When I see an ally get downed, I search for one of two possible solutions:

1.) CC anyone nearby my ally and then revive them. This includes blinds, dazes, stuns, knockbacks, etc., and can prevent enemy downed players from popping back up. Trust me!

2.) IF my ally is not being attacked by enemies, and the other team has a downed ally, I will target him/her for a finisher. Pop my ally back up.

I just get really irked when I see three or more people fully capable of dropping from the fight for five seconds to pick up a teammate to add to the damage output. Not all of them have to drop what they’re doing mind you, but one. One person can make a huge difference in a battle, especially if their actions lead to more firepower appearing on the field.

Might just be me, but the last few days of hotjoins I’ve noticed that the teams I’ve joined are out for blood. More than usual. Like every day, the players I find are more and more interested in killing each other than actually capturing points. They don’t even zerg from one node to another; they just zerg to the nearest enemy player.

Basilisk Venom is great in an sPvP situation (maybe WvW? I haven’t tried there), if you’re one of those rare thieves trying out a Venomsharing build and happen to take it. Think about it.

Applying a buff that stuns enemies onto EVERY teammate within a short range of you.

In group fights, I’ve found that sharing Basilisk Venom can utterly destroy people on the other team. Sometimes we all hit the same target, so he falls down and dies before he can do anything. Other times, our attacks are split and the entire enemy team can’t do squat for its (short) duration. When they do recover, their weaker teammates are sitting down or eating dirt. After that, I’ll pop another venom on my utility bar to spread immobilizes or chills to my allies’ attacks. I crowd control so you don’t have to!

Is it a mediocre elite? Well, yeah. I’ll never consider it for anything other than a venom sharing build, since Thieves Guild brings in a lot of firepower; the other elite we have makes me giggle like a raving lunatic whenever I use it. Daggers, daggers everywhere! ALL THE DAGGERS, MUAHAHAH!

Er, excuse me.

It’s a bad elite on its own, but with traits and teammates it can help wreck everything in sight.

I can’t say for myself that the daily capture requirement has made me a worse sPvPer. Protecting nodes my team already has (if we own two) is more important to me than trying to capture the third – unless I’m absolutely sure that I can do it without harming my team, or because the enemy side is assaulting one of our nodes and hitting theirs would reaaaally put the hurt on them.

There’s nothing worse than trying to capture one point, just to lose the only one you actually had.

It takes me 3-5 matches to complete my daily captures now. Not a big problem since I only play in hot-join sPvP, but it definitely adds more games to my playtime when I’d rather not spend too long on my computer (since it’s suffering from hardware issues I can’t fix at this time).

I agree with the poster above. Anyone who has stood in a node to help capture it for at least one tick (past neutral and into their team’s colour) ought to get credit for the capture even if they leave the node. Or speed up the capture process when there’s more than one player sitting in it.

Archaon.6245:

In simple words hs from bp field = awesome dmg + gap closing c&d

You forgot the part where it was massively more effective on targets at or below 25% health! If you can get them down that far, that is. I haven’t tried the build in sPvP, myself.

Charr are carnivorous, not omnivorous. >_>;;

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Not sure if it’s a ranger trait but underwater I have been fighting some rangers who have had their pet rez outheal my dps, so better take out the pet first if you get the ranger to Down State under water and while doing that the ranger can kill you or heal him/herself :P

I don’t think it is necessary to change it though.

Yeah. As far as the ranger pet heal goes, it can generally overcome anything a single opponent can dish out, save a finisher move. I really wish they’d allow finishing moves to be used underwater, provided it had the same kill radius as the land one currently does.

lvis.3824:

well, according to the combatlog he just did the following:

BP
steal
HS
Backstab

And this is totally okay.
If you stand in the BP there is really nothing unusual.

You don’t technically need to use Steal except to close the distance (because HS won’t get you close enough to actually hit) or get the item from using the ability.

When you use HS in BP, stealth does not apply until after the attack animation and damage lands. So technically, it’s a completely legitimate combo.

I always thought that a guardian’s abilities were based upon their desire to protect people/one person (ie. Logan Thackeray), not on faith.

Zaxares.5419:

Like many religious codes, the Ventari Tablet contradicts itself. “Never leave a wrong to ripen into evil or sorrow” and “All things have a right to grow” in particular clash since if an evil is unrepentent, how are you to stop it from committing evil without “uprooting” it and violating the fourth tenet? (And you can’t just do nothing either, since the 6th tenet instructs you to “act”).

Furthermore, the tenets are not organised in any level of hierarchy, so it really falls to each individual sylvari to decide which one they think takes precedence in any given situation.

The tenet “Never leave a wrong to ripen into evil or sorrow” is almost a warning for Sylvari. It aknowledges that evil already exists, but it urges them to prevent further evil from spreading or growing. How a sylvari chooses to do that, is largely up to their own beliefs.

“All things have a right to grow. The blossom is brother to the weed.” I am having trouble trying to describe this one. It urges all Sylvari to respect the idea and opinions of others, until such time as those ideals come into conflict with those of other people. This is largely why the Nightmare Court is such a big enemy to Sylvari everywhere – though they have the right to their opinions, they have no right to force those opinions onto other Sylvari, who might disagree with them (the Nightmare Court) in the first place.

Sylvari can still be mauled to death by people, wildlife, traps, etc. However, they have a sort-of natural “resistance” to the corrupting effects of the Elder Dragons, immediately dying instead of being turned into the enemy. No NPC has been able to figure out why the plant-people are capable of resisting the Elder Dragons in such a way, but some speculate that it has something to do with their recent appearance in history. That they are so new could mean that the Elder Dragons don’t yet know how to turn them into Risen, Branded, Icebrood, etc.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

But you see, nodes don’t disappear. Their appearance does, showing something as harvestable or harvested, but the pathing and placement is the same for everyone. So unless they have it so that everything is exactly the same but with new textures, then they can’t alter the landmass in a similar way.

Those giant corals will have to remain, or replaced by trees or some such of the exact same shape, placement, and size. Those building ruins can’t be changed unless something new gets put in the same places which are also the same size and shape.

Doing such is not only barely reasonable, but not very realistic that despite it looking different, it’s the exact same – especially with how even with different appearances, you’ll be having the same exact events and spoken dialogue (since those are server based). So even if they do simply change all the textures, there will still be hundreds of risen praising Zhaitan and dozens of Pact soldiers saying how they’re going to bring Zhaitan down and how he’s still a threat. That’s more immersion breaking than those three zones permanently stuck in the timeline before Zhaitan’s defeat.

Good points. Didn’t think about it that way.

One thing I think they ought to keep away from just for the sake of preserving the time-space continuum is directly mentioning the Elder Dragons when we’re at war with them. I can understand “taking X location from Zhaitan’s minions”, but listening to an NPC say “we need to hold this location to prepare for the assault on Zhaitan” stops making sense when he’s dead in lore.

I have no doubts that the Pact and us players will have to deal with the remnants of their minions once the other Elder Dragons are defeated, but it’s going to confuse people if the dialogue isn’t worded, uh… properly.

Considering that Anet is able to make gathering nodes appear and disappear on a per-player basis, I would not be surprised if they ended up altering the land mass in a similar way for players who have completed the storyline.

Risen will still be firmly entrenched in Orr for a long time to come – though it’s been smashed through by Pact forces, they won’t give up or die so easily. I would not be surprised if there were other areas in Orr where Risen are being manufactured, though the largest of them have probably been destroyed and dismantled by the player-hero.

If Orr is supposed to sink with Zhaitan’s death, then why didn’t it rise back up after Khilbron died when he sunk it in the first place?

As for loading and unloading, I think they just use a rope or rope ladder. There’s a field hospital in the Straits of Devastation where a helicopter unloads injured soldiers every couple minutes, though they only drop down a single rope for these people to climb down and then hobble into a cot (which might not work for someone with two injured legs).

Granted, the DE there has to be completed before they show up, and we don’t get to see the injured soldiers slide onto the ground from the helicopter. They just… appear, on the ground.

I am very impressed by what you’ve shown here. I don’t WvW, but I end up feeling bad knowing that you’re killing people from my server (TC). Anyways, watching your video has really inspired me to dust off my thief again. I haven’t had a great time in any form of combat (PvE, WvW, sPvP), but I’m going to get my feet wet in a couple dungeons and sPvP with what you run. I enjoy the look of your build, but what gets me the most is your keybindings.

You have the fourth dagger skill set to Q, and everything other weapon attack set to C, V, F, and X. Your utilities are set to 1-5. How do you manage to use all these skills, turn with the precision of the mouse, and STILL be able to pull off dodge rolls to one side or another? I just can’t do all that at once, myself.

Lastly, why Valkyrie and Berserker gear? I’m curious as to why you take a mixture of the gear when you don’t really need the extra precision, or do ’zerker stats just have better power and crit damage?

Thank you for showing the community that the thief is truly something to be feared in the right hands!